Brian, I recently watched a clip on the pledge and could not believe how wonderful it sounded before they added 'God'. Even after Einstein's theories came out you would think our nation was getting away from religious beliefs. p.s Love how you added the trademark there. :)

I was about 18. After a brief flight of fancy when I was 16 or 17 about going to seminary I started paying closer attention to my faith. What I found were a lot of questions, not a lot of satisfactory answers, and a huge amount of rationalization. I would say a series of realizations, events, and reflection transformed me from believer to agnostic to atheist to just shy of strong atheist. Though due to problems of definition I still consider myself a technical agnostic because proving a negative is quite challenging.

I wasn't really raised religious, but I was probably around 8 or 9 when I started realizing that Christianity was a load of crap. That led me to my Buddhist phase, until I acknowledged to myself that I didn't know anything about Buddhism. After questioning my previous assumption that everyone has a religion, I began my life as an atheist... except I had never heard the word "atheist" until I was 17.

So if you want to be technical, I was 17 when I declared myself an atheist.